The 1955 Anti-Baha'i Campaign, a Radio Sermon With State Backing

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

A month-long, state-sanctioned campaign against Iran's Baha'i community unfolded in the spring of 1955, opened when the cleric Sheikh Mohammad Taqi Falsafi obtained the Shah's personal approval to preach against the Baha'is on national and army radio through the Ramadan sermons. Ayatollah Sayyed Hossein Behbahani sent congratulatory messages once the campaign's central act, the army's occupation and demolition of the faith's national center in Tehran, the Haziratu'l-Quds, was carried out, its dome torn down and the building occupied by troops; the Shiraz Baha'i center was closed and occupied within weeks.

This was a coordinated state action rather than unlicensed mob violence: Chief of Staff General Batmanghelich struck the first blow of the demolition by hand, and Tehran Military Governor Teymur Bakhtiar ordered the center's occupation. Deputy Seyyed Ahmad Safa'i introduced a bill in the Majlis on 10 May 1955 to outlaw the faith outright, ban membership, confiscate Baha'i property and purge Baha'is from government posts; it failed to pass that year.